How To Write SEO Friendly Post Title For More Blog Traffic – HostNamaste

#1) Identify and Use Keywords

First of all, you need to identify and use the right keywords in your titles. Most of the time, these will be the keywords you are using throughout the article. However, some of these words and phrases might not be suitable for the title. At the same time, other keywords might be more used in post titles for articles about the topic you are writing about. And that’s why your audience will probably expect to see these certain keywords. Try to use them or their synonyms to attract the attention of your audience and improve your title SEO.

#2) Use Numbers in Listicle Titles

Another thing you should do is to use numbers in your listicle titles. Recent research suggests that post titles that contain numbers resonate with 36% of readers – more than any other type of headlines analyzed in the study. Consequently, if you write posts structured as lists, make sure to use numbers in their titles to attract more readers. For example, instead of using “How to Make the Perfect Pumpkin Cinnamon Milkshake for Halloween”, use “10 Steps to Make the Perfect Pumpkin Cinnamon Milkshake for Halloween”.

#3) Be Brief and Informative

It goes without saying that being brief and informative with your titles is a must. If the title is too long, the audience won’t be able to see it entirely in search engine results which could drive some readers away. As Mark Black from the writing service reviews site Writing Judge notes, “Your post titles need to inform your audience about what they can get from your article. You need to put value into them if you want to convey the right message.”

#4) Consider Using Punctuation

Punctuation such as colons, hyphens, and brackets can add emphasis to your post titles as well as help the reader focus on the most important information in the titles. In other words, if you want to spice up your titles, using punctuation could be a good idea. To use colons, start the post title with the general topic (e.g. “Christmas: 10 Classic Movies to Watch”, “Stephen King: 5 Books to Get Started”). To use brackets or colons, break up the post title into two parts (e.g. “Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik Have Great News – They Are Expecting A Baby”, “5 Benefits of Fasting (& 5 Downsides)”).

#5) Don’t Match Titles to Keywords

When researching keywords, you probably came across both short and long-tail keywords to use. Though the short ones are perfect for titles, you don’t need to try to match your titles to long-tail keywords. This will only make your titles sound awkward because a lot of long-tail keywords actually have grammatical mistakes.

#6) Appeal to Emotions

Emotions are one of the most powerful Seo Tools you have that will help you create effective post titles. As Aza Ronan from the custom writing reviews site Pick The Writer puts it, “Using emotions in your content is a great way to get through to your audience. But you can also use emotional words in your titles to improve the click-through rate by catching the attention of more potential readers or viewers.”

#7) Address the Reader

According to the aforementioned study, titles that address the reader resonate with 21% of readers which was the second-highest percentage after titles with numbers. Addressing the reader involves using the second person or the “you” pronoun. Of course, if you write articles in first person or third person, this is not the best option for you. But if you do use the second person throughout the posts, make sure to use it in the titles too to make them more effective.

#8) Ask Questions or Cause Action

According to the same study, titles worded as questions resonate with 11% of readers. In a way, this is a method of addressing the reader, but you are also actively getting engaged with the audience by asking them the question you placed in the title. Alternatively, you can try to cause action with your titles by including a call to action. You don’t necessarily have to use it separately – combining the CTA with different types of titles could work too (e.g. “How to Create the Best Dog Costume for Halloween? Find Out with These 5 Easy Steps!”)

#9) Target Users, Not Search Engines

One big mistake many marketers and Writing Fully Optimized Content creators are making all the time is targeting search engines while forgetting about their audience. You need to target users instead – not search engines. If you only try to make your titles work for traffic, you might end up getting the opposite effect. Of course, keywords will help you rank higher in search results, but it’s the user clicks that will actually do the job. That’s why you need to make sure that the titles are appealing to your readers first and to the search engines second.

#10) Create Title Tags for Your Pages

Last but not least, you need to create title tags for your pages where the posts or articles are published. WordPress creates titles tags automatically, but you will need to create them yourself if you are using a different platform. The HTML title tag is somewhat of an official title of your page, so creating them is more than necessary. You can make the title tag different from the post title, but try to stick to the same keywords as much as you can.

Final Thoughts

All in all, writing compelling post titles that will attract your audience’s attention while also being SEO friendly is a must for any marketing strategy. Use the techniques in this article to create your own post titles and perfect them as much as you can.